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Bucs Get Young DE Back From ‘Skins

The Buccaneers obviously didn’t want to lose Markus White, and White was happy to come back to Tampa when he had the chance.

On Thursday, the Bucs signed White to their practice squad for the second time. He probably would have had one uninterrupted stint on that unit had not the Redskins come calling in September.

White first joined the Buccaneers on September 3 as the team formed its practice squad for the first time in 2012. However, players that are on NFL practice squads remain free agents of a sort, in that they are free to terminate their contracts and sign with another team as long as that second team is adding them to their active roster. That’s what the Redskins did on September 18. When such a maneuver is made, the new team must keep the player on their roster for at least three weeks.

That’s essentially what Washington did with White, releasing him again on October 9 in order to sign linebacker Mario Addison. That was good news for the Buccaneers, who quickly stepped in to bring White back, releasing defensive end Kendrick Adams from their practice squad to make room.

White has now had two stints each with Washington and Tampa Bay, because it was the Redskins who brought him into the league as a seventh-round draft pick in 2011. He played in two games as a rookie, mostly on special teams, and went back to training camp with the Redskins this past summer. At Florida State, White played in 39 games with 27 starts and recorded 131 tackles, 28.5 tackles for loss, 11 sacks, with eight of those sacks coming during his senior year.

The Redskins called White, who stands 6-4 and weighs 264 pounds, an outside linebacker in their 3-4 defensive scheme. The Buccaneers view him as a 4-3 defensive end.